. >> steven johnson is our guest sunday taking your calls, e-mails and tweets on in depth. the author will look at sites history, the cyber world, popular culture in computer networking and politics. live at noon eastern on booktv on c-span2. >> this is the first parish church in brunswick maine, and its significance to the story of uncle tom's cabin is that in many ways the story began you. is here in this q., q. number 23, that harriet beecher stowe, by her account, saw a vision of uncle tom being whipped to death. now, uncle tom as you probably know as the title character of the hero of her 1852 novel, uncle tom's cabin. uncle tom's cabin was written very much as a protest novel, by anyone in the north, take a in knowing what all abolitionists lived, if anyone in the north was to aid or abet a fugitive slave, they themselves would be imprisoned or fined for breaking the law. and this was the bill which was seen as kind of the compromise between the north and south to avoid war. so that was part of what the novel was trying to do was to say listen, i'm a person, harriet b